The 2026 World Cup has been coined the ‘most polluting ever’ by the BBC, with the tournament projected to generate 9 million tonnes of CO2 emissions.
Much of that will be produced as a result of FIFA’s decision to spread the matches across the whole of North America.
Although there have been efforts to limit travel in the group stage, many teams still have their games split across two countries, and all teams have multiple cities on their schedules.
South Africa, who were drawn in Group A and will open the tournament against Mexico, will cover the greatest distance.
Their group games are divided across the USA and Mexico.
Here’s their schedule for the group stage:
Mexico City Stadium, Mexico City: 11th of June, South Africa Vs Mexico Atlanta Stadium, Atlanta: 18th of June, South Africa vs Czechia
Estadio Monterrey, Monterrey: 24th of June, South Africa vs the Republic of Korea
Travel back and forth between Mexico and the USA means that South Africa will cover 21,090 miles in the group stage alone.
If Bafana Bafana made it through to the final, for a fan to attend all of their games would generate 5.9 tonnes of CO2.
That’s more than the average South African produces throughout an entire year (5.8 tonnes)!
Bigger, Not Necessarily Better
Despite reiterating their commitment to making sport’s biggest event more sustainable, FIFA have made the 2026 World Cup bigger than ever.
This year’s tournament will feature 48 teams, a sizable increase from the 32 who competed in 2022.
While that means more soccer for fans to sink their teeth into, it also means more waste generated, miles travelled and CO2 produced.
For many, it feels like a step back considering the 2022 Qatar World Cup was the most compact and eco-friendly of all, with the eight stadiums within just 34 miles of each other.
That’s almost a third of the shortest distance between stadiums at this year’s World Cup: 95.5 miles between New York’s MetLife Stadium and Philadelphia’s Lincoln Financial Field.
The dedication to sustainability was evident at the Qatar World Cup, which boasted stats such as:
Stadiums stopped 79% of solid waste from ending up in landfills by reusing and recycling.
Prevented the use of 300,000 plastic bottles by installing water fountains and giving out 43,000 reusable water bottles.8 tonnes worth of leftover food were donated to food banks to reduce waste.
What Do Low Overall Eco Scores Mean for Sustainability in Soccer?
Despite FIFA emphasising its focus on sustainability for the 2026 World Cup, our investigation shows they’re coming up short.
Even our winning city of Vancouver only posted an Eco Score of 6.7 out of 10, and only four cities scored above six!
FIFA needs to match their actions with their words. Choosing host cities which are known for being unwalkable and lacking in public transport infrastructure makes travel more complicated for fans and costly for the environment.
That’s before we even consider the impact of travel between the games, which are spread across the continent and the increased waste generated by the biggest ever World Cup.
The 2030 World Cup will be even more sprawling as it takes place across Europe (Spain and Portugal) and North Africa (Morocco), a choice FIFA have reaffirmed despite concerns over the amount of travelling.
Given all of that, and the low Eco Scores of this year’s host cities, we have to question whether FIFA are really taking sustainability seriously.
Methodology for Calculating Eco Scores
There’s a lot to consider in terms of sustainability for an event as big as the World Cup. To make things easier, we broke down the areas we examined into the key factors.
Key Factor
What We Examined
Transport
The percentage of the population who commute using public transport The percentage of electric vehicles compared to gas vehicles The number of public transport stops within a ten-minute walk of the World Cup stadium
Vehicles
The total number of electric vehicle charging points in each city
Waste
The amount of waste generated by a city which isn’t recycled
Air Pollution
The air pollution levels recorded in each city
Commitment to Sustainability
The number of trees planted by each city The volume of meat consumed by each cityThe number of LEED* certified buildings in each city
Greenhouse Gas Emissions
The greenhouse gas emissions of each city over a year
* The LEED certification is awarded to green buildings which prioritize sustainability. There’s four brackets with the most eco-friendly being awarded a platinum certification.
Our Eco Scores Formula
We provided each factor with a score out of ten based on where it fell within our brackets.
For example, if a city had between 28 and 30 public transport stops within ten miles of the stadium, it scored ten points.
If the city had between 25 and 27 stops, they scored nine points and so on until we reached one point.
To get an overall Eco Score, we added together the scores for each of the factors and divided by the total number of factors.
Sources
The sources we used for our investigation broken down by the six key factors:
He was recognized by Ravi Kahlon, BC’s MLA Minister for Jobs, Economic Recovery and Innovation in September 11, 2017.
In December 2022 he was Awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Platinum Jubilee Pin.
Awarded Rotary Paul Harris Fellow Award for tangible for significant assistant given for the better understanding and friendly relations among peoples of the world.
